Free Method 15 33 by Shannon Kirk Page A

reaching a plateau and normalized rhythm. Not once during my struggle did I open my eyes or did he stoop to help.
    When I could regulate the draw of air through my nose, I lay in a crescent position and cracked open my right eye, the one closest to the ceiling. Unfortunately, I met both his searing eyes, and thus a stalled moment of mutual hate suspended us in a dangerous stand-off.
    He made the first move.
    In a swift, downward swing, he swooped his right hand to grab a fistfull of my splayed hair. Upward he jerked my neck and torso to an involuntary and quick sitting, only to drag me bumping backwards along the floorboards, my tailbone taking the brunt of the hard wood planks.
    Let me describe the pain. Imagine emptying ten tubes of superglue into a hat and placing the hat upon your head, allowing the inner rim and cotton skull to merge with every follicle in the spreading metastases of hardening adhesive. Now hook the top of the hat to a tree branch just slightly higher than your height. Stand. There is just enough room for the hat to yank each strand to within a micro fraction of snapping and the scalp skin to stretch to almost tearing. Rip, rip, slicing heat, rip.
    Along he pulled me, while I flailed, skip sliding, seeking intermittent relief and traction with my hands upon his forearm and my searching feet that would catch and fail, catch and fail. My head felt like fire, burning, raging, crackling, white-hot fire. No foothold was secure enough to withstand the toppling force of his pull.
    My body twisted left and right, a fighting tuna with raging fins being reeled out of the sea.
    Naturally, with so much torque, the invaluable new asset—the elastic band—in my underpants slipped out and shimmiedup to the bottom of my soaring waist. Its placement became so precarious, if I were to keep flailing my feet for traction, the angle and jostling would surely loosen the contraband further, off my rounded belly, and onto the floor. I had a choice: fight the pain or save the elastic.
Elastic
. I slackened my legs to straight, allowing him to freely pull my hair, and like a master pickpocketer, snaked within my pants, hooked the band, and squeezed the slithering life out of it.
    He noticed nothing, immersed too deeply in his effort to harm me. When we came to the top of the stairs, he dropped me to the bare floor, my backside dotted with a hundred splinters, my tailbone bruised, possibly broken, but my resolve beyond a thousand mountaintops, beyond a billion billion galaxies, beyond God, His angels, His enemies, and beyond a million mothers of missing children. He would die in pain now.
    “Stand up, bitch.”
    I did, slowly, nursing my wounds, but with closed fists behind my back.
    Again we stood in a standoff. I wanted him to go down the stairwell first so he couldn’t see me slip the elastic to safety.
    “Go, you moron,” he said.
    You’re commenting on my intelligence? Really?
    A second slipped, two seconds. Tick. Tock. He ground his teeth and lifted his arms.
    And then a phone I didn’t know existed rang on the floor below.
    “Oh, holy hell,” he said, as he slammed the stair treads on his way to the phone. “If you’re not down here in three seconds, I will drag your ass.”
    “Yes, sir,”
moron, sir
.
    I slid my prize into my waistband and smiled.
    As I limped down the stairs, I strained to hear the conversation. I got his side, which was enough.
    “I told you this place was too open. For damn sake, two Girl Scouts came to the door with their mother. The mother wouldn’tfreaking leave. I can’t raise any damn suspicions, you say. Lay low, play the part, you say. Aren’t I some guy caring for his elderly parents out here? Oh, isn’t he the sweetest man, renovating the old building into a big home for his mother and father? Isn’t that what you said they’d say? For fuck’s sake! This is your dumbest idea yet, Brad. I had to give this Girl Scout bitch fucking tea, Brad. This is a shit idea of a cover. I